People often have father figures in addition to their actual fathers, and I was fortunate enough to have one in Al Evans, who passed away in mid-May. It’s been many years since I had seen him, but his influence on me never faded.
My mom met Mr. Evans while they were at Stanford. She and her friend Judy Brown lived in Florence Moore Hall, and since they had to go back and forth between the Quad and there for lunch, they came up with a better idea. Before too long, Mr. Evans was driving them to the Foster’s Freeze on El Camino just off campus. For the rest of her life, my mom would take the credit for the two of them meeting and later marrying, while Mr. Evans would always say with a wry smile that instead of “credit” it should be “blame.”
Every now and then my parents and I would drive to the Bay Area and it would always involve visiting the Evanses, often staying with them. Each time my dad would reassure us that he knew how to get to the house, and we would end up driving around in circles. More often than not we would have to find a phone to call the house and Mr. Evans would meet us and we would follow him to the house. If my dad did make it to the house on his own, you could count on Mr. Evans to ask how many times we circled around.
Mr. Evans spent his working career at Lockheed Missiles and Space in Sunnyvale at the south end of San Francisco Bay. He used to do Quality Control, the most notable thing being that his lab did QA for the Space Shuttle heat shield tiles. He took a few of them home, and Mrs. Evans used them as trivets. He would later teach classes about Quality Control.
While he had several cars, Mr. Evans seemed to take pride in keeping them as long as possible. I guess you could say that his mid-life crisis car was red and German. No, not a Porsche or the like; it was a VW Beetle, the kind from the 60s. The first time he drove it to work, people were wondering what person would park their car in Mr. Evans’ parking spot. Later, he retrofitted a Porsche engine into it and was not above flooring it when the light turned green and chuckled at the reactions of people next to him.
After my sophomore year of college, I lived with Mr. and Mrs. Evans for the summer while I worked at Lockheed (a job that Mr. Evans helped to facilitate). During that time, I realized that he was a lot like my dad, doing little projects around the house. If there was something that Mrs. Evans wanted to do to the house, he would do the obligatory grumbling, then get the job done. At the end of the summer, I was wanting to build a loft for my dorm room, and he helped quite a bit with that.
Through the many years since then, Mr. and Mrs. Evans would always keep in touch and make sure I was doing well. We tried to visit whenever we could, and it was always great to see them.
This past weekend was the memorial service for Mr. Evans. It was clear that he had the same impact on everyone there. For the past several years, he was in an assisted living home, and many residents and workers came. It was also great to see their Evans' daughter, Martha. We've known each other since we were young kids, and it's been fun to keep in touch over the years.
It may sound like Mr. Evans had an impact on my life in several ways over many years, and indeed that's the case. He had a wonderful sense of humor, could be gruff while making it obvious it was playful, and would show a sense of wonder. He had a way of making his dreams come true, such as going through the Panama Canal after he retired (he couldn't before because his security clearance limited his travel opportunities).
Both Mr. and Mrs. Evans may have been my mom's closest friends, but I considered them my friends too.
